So They Grew
by Kathryn Claire O'Connor
Summary: #2 in the Junior Initiative Series! Snapshots of some of the moments that made the JID kids who they become. Ryan going into the ice, Andy becoming one of Fury's science experiments, Dakota almost dying, Eif's interaction with her uncle... although now he's more. *eight-shot. rated for abuse/torture, incest sort of, and possible swearing*
1. Chapter 1

**Here's the second story in the Junior Initiative Division series; hopefully you guys like it. It'll be eight chapters long, and there are a few time jumps - both forwards and backwards - just so that you know. Enjoy!:)**

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_British countryside, 1960_

Sixteen-year-old Ryan Rogers was exhausted. He and his mother, former Lieutenant Margaret Carter, had trained especially hard that day. The whole week, actually…

He was getting close to being ready, and both mother and son knew it. He could feel it – and it terrified him.

His mother wasn't entirely mentally stable; although he would never say so – didn't really even like to think about it – he knew it well enough. How else would the woman who had given birth to you come up with the idea of training you to be another super soldier and then freezing you into the Arctic beside your unconscious father? To say nothing of the fact that she knew exactly where Captain America was froze, but had done nothing to have him unfrozen?

No, regimentation might have been the lieutenant's strong suit, but stability? Well, not by all definitions of the word.

Sometimes – most of the time – Ryan even wondered if she actually thought of herself as his mother… or was she supposed to be just his drill sergeant? He sure knew what it seemed like, but, regardless of appearances, Ryan still considered her to be his mother, and he still loved her like a son would, even if his chances to show it were rare.

When those chances did come up, though, he took them – like just now. She had fallen asleep on the couch after supper while he had been cleaning up in the kitchen, and he had come around the corner to the unusual scene of her completely at ease in a place where he could see her. It was moments like this that made it easy to love her.

Ryan smiled softly and approached the old couch on silent feet. Taking the afghan off of the back of the couch, he draped the knitted cover over her shoulders. Apparently she wasn't as out cold as he had thought she was, because she smiled sleepily and reached out with her eyes still closed and squeezed his hand.

"Thanks, soldier," she whispered.

"You're welcome, Lieutenant," he answered as her breathing evened out. When he was absolutely certain that she wouldn't register what he said, he murmured, "I love you, Mom."

And he did love her. He loved her enough to do whatever she wanted him to do – even submit himself to being frozen for who knew how long…

* * *

A few months later, his greatest test – the one that he had been preparing for years for – finally came. Ryan, his mother, and two of her shady, paid-into-silence science friends were in the Arctic, preparing to lower him into the hole carved out of the ice.

Ryan glanced at the hole, hardly able to breathe past his swirling emotions, and refused to allow himself the thought that it looked like a coffin. After all, although the plan had been gone over innumerable times it wasn't absolutely guaranteed to work. If even one little thing went wrong, there was a good chance that he could freeze to death or suffocate or simply run out of oxygen down there.

But it would destroy his mother and her already fragile health if he refused to carry out the mission that they had been training for so many years for him to do. He knew that far too well; he'd thought through it all far too much in the last couple of months. The truth of the matter was that, at the end of the day, his choice could well turn out to be between letting his mother live – thereby chancing his own life underneath the ice – or walking away from his extremely sheltered, isolated life with his mother and out into the wide unknown without her. Considering the mental state she was already in, his walking away could leave her quite possibly so upset that she ended up in her deathbed.

His life with his mother had been something like living in a time warp. She had homeschooled him – a thing that was next to unheard of – so that they could concentrate on his training. They had lived deep in the country since the lieutenant had started to hate being around people after having him. They had grown their own food in a garden, even kept some chickens, so they rarely had to go into town, and even then Ryan only went half as often as his mother. She had tried her hardest to keep their house – and the way he grew up – in the era of the Second World War. To the best of his ability to understand her reasoning, all of this had been – in her mind – to make him more like Captain America, and if you didn't consider why she was doing it, it really hadn't been a bad way to grow up, had even left him much more mature then other children his age.

It had also left him a little intimidated by the idea of striking out on his own. Soldiers were used to – even conditioned to – taking orders, and Ryan had long thought of himself as a soldier. His mother called him a natural-born leader, but she had made certain that he knew how to follow orders too.

Another thing that soldiers did: they didn't fight for themselves; they fought for the guy who was fighting next to them – for their backup, their partner. The lieutenant had been all of those things to Ryan for all of his life, and he couldn't quite bear the thought of letting her down now – not after they'd come so far together and put so much into this plan. Somehow the idea of walking away from her – from this all – and leaving her hurting hurt him more than the idea of allowing himself to be lowered into the ground scared him.

So he took a deep breath, nodded resolutely, and laid down on the plank of wood that had been set out for him beside the hole. One of the scientists, or doctors, or whatever they were slipped a mask over his face – a sedative that would slow down his heart rate. Ryan paid the men no mind though, just looked past them and kept his eyes locked on the lieutenant as his eyelids got heavy, raising his hand to his head in a salute.

He was still saluting when the world went black.

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**Reviews are my new best friend, if you feel so inclined to drop me one! Thanks!:)**


	2. Chapter 2

_Vermillion, South Dakota, Present day_

Thirteen-year-old Andrew "Andy" Stark didn't let on just how brilliant he was. He never had, at least not in front of the adults.

The only adults that the JID kids ever came into contact with were from S.H.I.E.L.D., and Andy was pretty sure that S.H.I.E.L.D. was up to something where JID was concerned. He wasn't sure what, exactly, but he knew that there was something, and that was enough for him not to trust them. Not even the main trio that they saw knew just what he was capable of, and they had absolutely no idea how much he knew. Maria Hill had lived with the six kids on a daily basis up until two years ago – after which point the six remaining occupants of the JID building were basically left to their raise themselves – and after she left, Andy had gotten more suspicious than ever.

The three adults – Maria, Agent Coulson, and Director Fury – were well aware of the fact that he was a technological genius of an inventor, but they didn't know that he could do other things with tech as well. Like hack into it.

He had started small once Maria had left them; found a backdoor into Stark International and "borrowed" some of the earliest blueprints of a couple of Anthony Stark's favorite inventions, namely, the Iron Man suit and JARVIS.

He had tinkered with recreating the suit for awhile, but had eventually shelved the idea as being too complicated for him at the time. He'd had much better success with recreating JARVIS, though, and by the time he was twelve, he had managed to get the crude JARVIS rendition up, running, and installed in the house where he and the other kids lived. Dakota had been the one to coin the nickname "Sid" for the invention while it was still in the works because she called it a _s_imulated _i_ntelligence _d_evice – he couldn't convince her it was an AI – and since he wasn't entirely prone to doing nice things for his little sister, he had put the name into Sid's programming.

That had been a year ago, and since then Andy had grown into bigger things then sneaking into Stark's system. He'd managed to go undetected – or at least unreported – in the technological realm of S.H.I.E.L.D. quite a few times, and since then had learned quite a lot about who exactly the JID kids were – just because he lived with them didn't mean any of them had any idea who they really were – and why exactly such a great interest had been taken in them.

Learning what he had gone a long way towards explaining why the JID had been run like it had. Regimented, military-like precision in their schedules, unbelievable security systems and secrecy surrounding their even living in Vermillion, South Dakota, and above all the _training_.

When Andy had been six and the better half of the other kids five, Fury had sent an agent to teach them to fight in any and all ways. Since they trained daily with him, this teacher, Agent Barnes, had lived in the house with them. He, however, had left the same day Maria had, but unlike Maria, he hadn't been seen since.

They had never seen Coulson again, either… but, although Andy had later found out why thanks to his hacking, he had made the executive decision then not to tell the others.

They didn't need to know that Coulson had died. Just like they didn't need to know that Andy's mother had been a prostitute in Mexico who had OD-ed when Andy was two. Blaine didn't need to know that he was the inspiration for this place. Dakota didn't need to know that her parents knew exactly who and where she was, but simply chose never to come visit her. Blaine and Scarlet didn't need to know that their mother was in the same position, despite never having trusted her now-husband – their father – with any of this information, not even the fact that they existed. Hayne and Hazel didn't need to know that about _their_ parents, either. They didn't need to know that once their parents were gone for one reason or another, Fury intended to employ the kids as the replacements – the second generation of his precious Avengers.

There was even something that Andy had recently stumbled upon in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database that even he wished he didn't know. While he was still having trouble working with the Iron Man suit blueprint that he had – it really was one of the earliest blueprints – somebody working for S.H.I.E.L.D. had gotten really creative with the idea. They had found a way to meld the workings of the suit into the _inside _of someone's body, and now S.H.I.E.L.D. just needed a guinea pig to try it out.

And who better to use as a guinea pig then someone that the vast majority of the world didn't even know existed? Better yet, why not use the _upgraded _Iron Man on the _next _Iron Man? And that, Andy had seen in black and white in Fury's file on him, was none other than thirteen-year-old Andrew Stark. What plans Fury had for him. Hooray.

"Andy?"

He turned from the invention that he had been fiddling with on his desk to see Hazel standing in the doorway of his bedroom.

Andy rubbed his temples as he asked, "Yeah?"

"Fury and Maria are going to be here in an hour and Dakota's going nuts trying to make sure that everything's ready for them; are you?"

"No," he said flatly, trying not to show that he was stressed about the visit.

Apparently he was failing because Hazel said, "You know it's really not that big of a deal as Dakota likes to turn it into."

"Yes, it is;" he said tiredly. "It's always a big deal when they come by anymore."

Hazel cocked her head at him and narrowed her eyes as she took a couple of steps closer to him, asking, "Are you okay? You don't look right."

"Thanks," he drawled.

"That's not what I meant! You look _sick_."

Andy considered his options as he looked intently at the twelve-year-old, finally saying, "Hazel, Fury wants to do something to me – I think he wants it done in the next couple of days – and I'm scared of what could happen."

Her brown eyes darkened with concern – Andy watched to make sure that they didn't lighten to the hazel color that meant she was going to start hulking out – and she said, "Maybe Hayne's 'friend' could do something about it if we told him; any of us could, I guess, if we need to."

"No, don't tell anyone."

"Why not?"

"Because." _Because Fury may be dangerous and we may not be as valuable to him as he likes to pretend we are._

"Well," Hazel bit her lip as she suggested. "I know that in my 'best form' I'm not even a third as strong as Hayne could be, but if you want me to, I could keep an eye on you and them tonight, and try to be there if something does go wrong."

Andy smiled a little at her then, saying gratefully, "Thanks, Hay day."


	3. Chapter 3

Hazel crept silently along the hallways of the JID building's lowest, most unfamiliar level, being careful to stay a few feet behind Andy, Fury, and Maria and not make a sound, fighting panic all the while. She wished momentarily that Scarlet was there with her, or even instead of her; the other girl had been allotted special time with Agent Barnes and because of that had become the most capable of being covert among the children. Just as Andy had predicted, the two agents had gotten him alone and struck up what looked to be a serious conversation with him. As best as Hazel could hear, they were talking about an invention – an upgrade in an invention… and Iron Man. One of Tony Stark's inventions? What did Andy have to do with that? And why did the agents want this conversation to be so clandestine?

Then suddenly the trio ahead of her took a turn and when Hazel took the same turn, she almost ran straight into a door. Hazel's panic doubled as she looked at the sign on the door.

_Experimentation – authorized personnel only._

Despite being basically unfamiliar with this level of the building – as she knew the rest of the JID were – she knew that door. It was there in her nightmares every so often even after six years. Half of her lifetime had gone by, and yet she still vividly remembered what Fury had had done to her beyond that door.

She had been six years old at the time, and just getting good at controlling her "anger issues." Fury, however, had apparently had a different train of thought when it came to that "issue." He didn't think that she was strong enough when her "friend" came to visit. Compared to Hayne's "friend" and certainly the original "Hulk," Hazel was well aware of the fact that she was weak even back then, and she had known enough to be grateful for it.

Until Fury had sent Maria out on some one-day mission to keep from her what he wanted to have done and then taken Hazel into that room, leaving her there with a white-haired doctor with a twisted expression before the director left. That doctor had laid her down on an examination table and put her in restraints before proceeding to… well, to torture her. Mostly he had burned her – cigarette burns, electrocution; he'd even held a lighter to her stomach – always in places that Maria wouldn't notice. His last ditch effort had been to break her wrist, and that had been explained away as a bad spill from the climbing wall in the training room. Oh, yes, she had hulked out – but no matter how mad and scared she got, no matter how much she fought the doctor and the restraints, her version of "the Hulk" never got any stronger than it had been before.

She couldn't get it to be; that wasn't the way that it worked. It didn't matter that she knew that; Fury and his goon didn't, so they tried it anyway, and she was the one who paid for it for weeks after. She still paid for it even today in her nightmares.

From the other side of the door to the experimentation lab, Hazel heard a scream that at once both tore her out of her reliving her own nightmare and made that same nightmare all the more real in her mind. She peered warily through the impossibly narrow window in the door, already knowing that she wouldn't like what she saw.

Andy lay stretched out and restrained on the very same table that she had once laid on, and it was even the same doctor who was pushing a needle into his arm. One shot after another until Hazel lost count, each one making Andy scream bloodily. Whatever pain he was in, it was much worse then what the good doctor had put her through, of that Hazel was certain.

And then he caught sight of her. They locked eyes – his brown ones were dizzy with pain and seeing them made her own eyes turn hazel as she finally lost control of her heart rate and hulked out. She could still stay in control of herself though, that was how weak a "Hulk" she was. If she couldn't tear her eyes away from the sight of Andy before, she didn't want to now. For some reason it felt like that would be a betrayal to this boy that she had grown up with, so she stayed brave and just kept her eyes on his, offering to him the only source of comfort she could while the doctor did who knew what to him.

After the doctor was finally, finally done with Andy, the trio of adults spent another solid hour observing him and discussing whatever it was that they had put into his body and how it would and could potentially affect him. Hazel stayed where she was the whole time, trying to hear what they were saying. From what little she gathered of their hushed tones, this was supposed to be some experimental version of Iron Man's suit, and it was either going to make Andy practically a human adaptation of the suit or kill him.

Eventually, Fury and the doctor came out of the room together, leaving Hazel to duck into the nearest empty room to avoid detection. She stayed there for another solid hour, fighting to get her hulking back under control and to get back to her normal self. It had been six years since she'd struggled this much to regain her self-control, and she didn't really know what to do with herself.

It wasn't until she heard Maria start up the hallway with Andy that Hazel was finally able to reign herself in to the fullest. At least he wasn't dead – yet. Maria and Andy took the elevator, so Hazel bounded up the stairs, going straight to where she knew Maria would take Andy – his room.

The duo was already there when she made it to the doorway where she had been only a few hours before. Andy was already in the bed, looking completely drained, and Maria was standing over him, murmuring apologies. The woman who had raised them looked like she was fighting tears.

"Andy, are you okay?"Hazel managed to ask innocently, refusing to look at Agent Hill.

"Fell down a flight or two of stairs," he murmured weakly as his eyes began to droop.

"Hazel, do you realize how late it is?" Agent Hill asked her. "You should've been bed hours ago. What were you doing?"

"I was watching a movie in the entertainment room," Hazel lied apologetically, forcing herself to look the woman innocently in the eye. "I lost track of time; sorry. When I came by to go to bed, I thought I heard voices, so I decided to check on him."

"Alright," Maria said, but the look in her eye said that she knew that she was being lied to. "I'm going to leave now. I've got to be back at work at normal time tomorrow, but I'll come by and check on you this weekend with the doctor. Listen, Andy; if you need _anything _having to do with what we talked about, you call me, Director Fury, or Dr. Klein; do you understand?"

The boy nodded weakly.

"Okay," Maria said gently. As she moved past Hazel in the doorway, she put a hand on her shoulder and looked her evenly in the eye, requesting, "Take care of him for me?"

"Of course."

Maria nodded again and then disappeared down the hallway.

Once she was out of hearing range, Andy muttered weakly, "If she'd come around us at all, she'd know that all of us kids take care of each other."

"But I couldn't take care of you back there," Hazel murmured, going to perch on the edge of his bed as she looked down at his ashen face.

"'S okay," he slurred, already almost asleep.

"No, it's not, but if you found out where that Dr. Klein lives and we told Hayne what just happened-"

"'S okay, Hazel; Hayne cain' fix ev'r'thin'."

"He could stop Doc-"

Andy shook his head insistently, interrupting her again to request, "Jus' stay 'ere. An' don' tell Koty 'r 'ayne."

"I won't tell our siblings," Hazel promised. "I'll stay here, don't worry. Go to sleep."

He obeyed, drifting off into fitful dreams as Hazel wished that she could tell her twin what she had seen done to Andy. At the very least, her brother could scare Dr. Klein into abandoning his horrific project… if her twin would let himself.


	4. Chapter 4

Like his twin sister, Hayne had learned to completely control his "anger issues" when he was six years old. Although he had never been the virtual conspiracy theorist that Andy had turned into once Maria left, he had never completely trusted Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. either. All of the nagging doubts and fears that he was capable of as a six year old had been easily verified for him in one fell swoop when his twin had come to him one night half his lifetime ago after lights out, softly sobbing her eyes out as she broke house rules and left her bed for his. Blaine – with whom Hayne shared a bedroom to this day – hadn't ratted the siblings out; Hayne suspected that the other boy had heard what Hazel had whispered to him in the darkness about the horrible things that the doctor had done to her earlier that day, about the real way that she'd had her wrist broken by the monster.

Hayne hated using that word to describe any human being because as a "hulk" he felt that if it should be used to describe anyone, it should be used to describe him. He had used it then, though, in describing that doctor, and he had meant it with every fiber of his being. The older man had seemed like so much worse than Hayne's "friend" in that moment and he still seemed like worse than "the other guy" even six years later.

Hayne had never quite gotten over being angry about what had been done to Hazel, but the JID building had suffered a royal visit from his "friend" the next day over it, and that was when he had realized the absolute necessity, not of keeping himself from becoming angry, but of concealing the anger – sometimes even from himself. And so, without even realizing the link to Dr. Banner, his secret to controlling "the other guy" had become the same one that the original Hulk used. He was always angry.

It had been a long time since he had been this angry though… and all he had wanted to do was find his twin sister.

"Hey, there you are," he said, finally finding Hazel keeping vigil in Andy's bedroom, of all places. "How's he doing?"

"Finally sleeping," Hazel answered heavily. "He's been in so much pain that I don't think he slept at all last night."

"Did you?" Hayne asked, looking into his sister's tired brown eyes.

"No; I stayed up with him."

"Why, Hazel?"

"Because he was sick; still is…"

Hayne looked back down at the teenager, asking, "How come? Fury said last night before Andy went off with him and Maria that Andy wasn't feeling well – they thought he had food poisoning or something, but this doesn't look like food poisoning to me."

"We're twelve, Hayne; what do we know about food poisoning?"

"Don't you remember that day that Maria went on an assignment and Phil Coulson tried making hamburgers for us with that meat that was supposed to have been thrown out? We all got sick from it."

Hazel bit her lip, looking away from him, and Hayne remembered that day was the day that the doctor had hurt her so badly.

He stiffened and took a deep breath to steady himself before asking, "What aren't you telling me, Hazel?"

She shook her head, but he caught tears in her eyes as she said, "Andy made me promise not to tell you."

"Tell me what?" he probed. "Did Fury do something to Andy last night?"

"No…" Hazel said slowly.

"Did he _have something done to him_?"

"Please don't ask me that," she whispered.

"Is that why he's in so much pain?"

She nodded begrudgingly, admitting, "I'm not even sure I know what happened."

"But you saw something happen," Hayne clarified.

She nodded again.

"Can you try and describe what you saw?"

Again she refused with a "Andy made me promise not to tell you or Dakota."

Hayne sighed and ran a hand over his eyes, thinking this through. "Probably for the best," he admitted. "…But he didn't make you promise not to tell someone else, right?"

Hazel narrowed her eyes at him, getting where he was taking his train of thought. "Hayne…"

"I'll be right back," he said, standing up and bounding out of the room.

He focused on his breathing – and keeping his heart rate steady – as he walked down the hallway, thinking this through. Unlike his sister, his version of the Hulk wasn't so controllable, and it was a problem when "the other guy" came around.

So the question now was – in order to keep himself calm and let Hazel honor her promise – did he need to sic Blaine or Scarlet on his twin? Considering that this was Hazel, it would probably be better to let her talk to her roommate – which meant that he now had to hunt down Scarlet.

And where else would she be found but in the training center? In the hand to hand ring with her brother, to be exact.

"Hey, Scar, come here," Hayne said, waving her over from the edge of the ring.

She did a handspring and landed right in front of him.

Still in the middle of the ring, Blaine rolled his eyes as his eleven year old sister flipped her auburn hair back behind her shoulder and asked, "Yeah?"

"You know that Andy's sick, right?" Hayne verified.

"Yeah… I figured as much when he didn't come out of his room today. Food poisoning, right? What's that got to do with anything?"

"Hazel says he doesn't have food poisoning; she says she saw somebody do something to him last night on Fury's watch. I get the feeling that it's something that I might not want to get involved in… for 'my dear friend's' sake, you know."

"So you want me to play Hazel's hand-holding, tear-sharing best friend and get her to talk?" Scarlet asked with a roll of her eyes.

"You are her best friend, and you know that," he shot back.

"Only next to you."

"And I just told you: I don't want to get involved."

"Fine," Scarlet agreed, swinging down out of the fighting ring and heading up to their bedrooms. "But you're going to get involved, and we all know it."


	5. Chapter 5

Scarlet was right, Blaine knew. Hayne would get involved, and when Hayne got involved in potentially stressful situations, it had become Blaine's job to make sure that the other boy didn't "get out of hand," so to speak.

A few years back after Hayne's major blow up when he was six, Fury had seen to it that some scientist developed a sort of tranquilizer – a perfectly safe one – that made Hayne's "friend" disappear by keeping his heart beat regulated whenever he showed signs of coming around. While Maria had lived with them, it had been her job to shoot the drug into him – most of the time needing a literal handgun to do it. When she had left, Scarlet had originally tried taking over the job, but it had been unusually hard for her to shoot someone – no matter if it was for their own good – when she was so emotionally close to that person.

Because regardless of what she liked to pretend, Blaine knew that his sister considered the people that they lived with her family. They all considered one another family, whether they were related by blood or not. They pretty much had too, really, or else go at life totally alone. Unfortunately, they had learned two years ago – if not before then, where some of them were concerned – that the adults couldn't really be counted on. Even Maria – the closest thing that any of them had to a mother – was really nothing more than another puppet of S.H.I.E.L.D. when it came down to it.

So they learned early to take care of themselves, to rely on one another, to do the hard things for one another – to become a team. So Blaine had taken on a hard thing and relieved his little sister of the duty of snuffing out the Hulk when he came around.

That had been just a little less than two years ago, and now he barely thought twice before he stuffed a tranquilizer dosage into his pocket and picked up his favorite weapon, the one with which he had been best trained – his handy, dandy, pop-up-out-of-a-pocket-sized-box bow and arrow – before following Hayne and Scarlet at a distance.

Fury might just be a touch sadistic, but at least it could be said of him that he knew how to buy the kids good toys. At least the only kind that they ever had been given any time to play with.

But, hey, eventually all of their training – both self-inflicted and not – was bound to become useful, right? Like when he was put in the position to potentially have to embed an arrow in their Hulk's neck because – as he soon found out – Fury had gone off and made a walking, metallic science experiment of their little band's unofficial leader.

It was days like that one – when they were reminded of what Fury was really capable of doing, of how much power he had over their lives – that made Blaine really want to look for a way out of JID. Whatever Fury's endgame was for them, most of the kids had already figured out that it wasn't any good, and Blaine, for one, wanted out. But in the end it all came back around to them being one team.

No particular one of the JID kids was helpless in their own right, even if they were just adolescents. If he wanted to get himself out bad enough, he knew that he was entirely capable of doing it. If he worked with her on it, he could probably even figure out a way to get Scarlet out with him. But they all knew that there was no way that all six of them could flee the building at once for the simple desire to do so, and so there was an unspoken rule that no one left. It was all or none, no matter how bad it got around here.

For that reason, Blaine sometimes envied Hayne. When it all became too much for the other boy to handle and he began to hulk out because of it, he just had to look at Blaine, and the boy with the arrows would give him a way to sink into dark and warm – albeit temporary – escape from this place that had over the years become a prison.

When Blaine got to Andy's bedroom, Tony Stark's son and apparent prodigy was awake, sitting up in his bed, and arguing loudly with Hazel since Hayne had apparently been told _something_ although Andy had asked the girl hulk to keep her mouth shut.

"He might have a point," Blaine muttered in Hayne's ear from where the duo stood in the doorway. "You may not want to hear all of this. We both already know what Fury's capable of in the name of making us 'better heroes.'"

Hayne looked back at him over his shoulder, glaring fiercely but not seeming unsettled. "I'm not leaving. Something really wrong happened last night, and my sister's hurting because of it. Don't ask me to leave her right now."

Blaine nodded, taking a step back from Hayne and letting his eyes flitter over the scene in the bedroom.

Scarlet sat down in Andy's desk chair and put an arm on Hazel's shoulder, asking, "What's going on here?"

"Nothing," Andy snapped at her, answering the question for Hazel.

Scarlet glared at Andy trying again as she said pointedly, "_Hazel_, what's wrong?"

"Get out of my room, all of you!" Andy howled.

Hazel managed to get a word in edgewise then, putting a hand on Andy's shoulder as she asked, "How are they not going to find out about this? If it works, they obviously will, and if it doesn't…"

Hazel left the thought drifting off, but Andy supplied numbly, "I die."

And that was the moment that each of them realized just how many people in the world they were up against.

Most of humanity didn't know or care that they existed. The very agency that was supposed to take care of them – raise them, really – didn't care if they lived or died, and their parents appeared to care even less, considering that none of them had any memories whatsoever of those particular people. To top it off, they were being trained to fight bad guys – or guys that were even worse – that they had never even heard of before.

They were alone against the world, and until a better option came along, they were going to have to play by the rules that Fury made, no matter how horrible those rules were, no matter how horrible their lives got, because Fury obviously didn't have any problems with seeing them dead.


	6. Chapter 6

**A list of who's who for your personal reference:**  
**Ryan Rogers - Steve's and Peggy Carter's**  
**Andy Stark - Tony and Rosa Veracruz's (oc)**  
**Hayne and Hazel Ross - Bruce's and Betty Ross's**  
**Blaine and Scarlet Barton -Clint and Natasha's**  
**Eif/Demi Foster - Thor's and Jane Foster's**  
**Dakota Stark - Tony and Pepper's**

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**This was definitely the hardest chapter of this story for me to write, so be warned.**

* * *

"He's going to kill you if you don't go through with this, sweet girl," Sif said softly as she draped a plush, white cape across the narrow shoulders of the crying, ten-year-old demigoddess.

"And he'll kill you too," Eif said bluntly, knowing that Loki would've already threatened the woman warrior with death if she didn't see to it that Eif did exactly as she was told.

Sif answered simply, "Yes."

"But it's not fair!" Eif declared brokenly from in between sobs. "I'm only ten years old! Why is he doing this to me?"

"To have a solid claim to the throne; that's all that he ever wants – more power."

"But how does _this _lead to that?"

"Because as it stands you, my little blizzard-maker, are the rightful ruler of Asgard, and he – and the people – know it. Marrying you makes him the rightful king."

"But he's my uncle!" Eif wailed. "Is it even legal for him to marry me?"

"He's only adopted, so I'm afraid I don't know for certain; and even if it isn't, Loki will make sure that fact is overlooked regardless."

Sif shivered as she turned Eif around to look her in the eye, and the little blonde did the same. "You're going to look beautiful walking down the aisle within your flurry of snowflakes," Sif said, smiling sadly.

Eif looked out the window onto the veranda outside her bedchamber window. Snow was coming down madly in one little spot, and Eif knew that as soon as she stepped out under the sky, that little cloud of snow would be directly over her head – not that the thought bothered her. After all, her being so very upset had caused it to begin with.

"I'm afraid, Sif," she whimpered.

"I know," Sif choked, pulling her into a hug that Eif gratefully dove into.

Sif had become the closest thing to a friend that Eif had while enduring Loki's reign of terror over his niece and his country. She was the closest thing – at least on an emotional level – that the girl had to a parent, and Eif was well aware of the fact that she was hurting for her young charge far more then she let on. The uncharacteristic tears in the warrior's eyes made that plain.

"Come on," Sif said softly, putting her at arm's length. "Sit down in front of the mirror and let me do your hair." Eif obeyed and Sif began to tease the waves up into a style that Eif knew to be far too mature for her. Making her seem and act older than what she really was appeared to be the theme today. "I always loved your hair," Sif murmured, trying to distract her.

It didn't work, and Eif said – seemingly at random, "I look too much like a grown woman."

"You're much more grown then many girls your age," Sif said, and they both knew that she meant that in so many ways – both in maturity and physical appearance.

Eif was well-developed for her age in all of those ways, and that fact worried her.

"Sif?" she asked, looking at the woman in the mirror.

"Yes?"

"My marriage to Loki…" Panic began to seize her little heart, making the words nearly impossible to get past her throat as she all but whimpered, "Will it be… real?"

Sif's hands froze in the middle of running a brush through her hair when the girl's caregiver realized what she was being asked and something like resigned horror hit her dark eyes as she answered softly and as gently as possible, "I don't know."

Eif swallowed with great difficulty, forcing down her terror. Sif was right about one thing. She was, in fact, the queen of the nine realms, and it was far past time that she started acting like it. Like her grandmother, Frigga, had before her death – with grace and poise and courage. _Always_ with courage.

The small snowstorm on the veranda became a little less fevered as Eif straightened up resolutely in her chair, lifted her chin, and looked herself squarely in the eye in the gold-framed mirror as the ten year old was prepped for her wedding. She had been putting up with Loki's abuses for a decade already – her whole life – and she was thoroughly convinced that he couldn't make her any more afraid of him than what she already was, and certainly he wouldn't be able to make her life worse. So she would do what was expected of her in front of all of the people today. She would smile even with her eyes, laugh like she meant it, and do a trick or two with her snow-and-ice-controlling capabilities if she was asked. In the public eye, she would act as happy as she always did – because it was always an act – and in private after the night was over, she would mourn her uncle's finding one more way to keep her under his thumb.

But then later that night after all of the guests had gone, Loki charged into her bedchamber, expression dark with anger. It wasn't a new scene for her to go through by any means, but it still struck fear in her all the same.

"I told you to be _happy_!" Loki snarled, slapping her across the face.

Eif drew back from the same old familiar sting, but didn't say anything. The past decade had taught her that defying him only made whatever he was planning worse.

"Your very existence took away everything from me, and the one thing I ask you to do – to be happy on your god-forsaken wedding day – and you can't do it! I told you to convince me that you were a giddy, blushing bride in love with the man who had worked so hard to raise you! And. You. Didn't! Do! It!"

"_God-forsaken?" _she retorted mentally. _"I thought that you were a god."_

Her mind thought what her mouth would never, ever be stupid enough to say as Loki picked her up by her neck, letting her choke and scratch uselessly at his hands for a moment before he flung her across the room with ease. Staying curled into herself where she had landed, she heard him lock the bedroom door and a whine rose pitifully in the back of her throat. She didn't – wouldn't – give him the satisfaction of hearing it though, despite the fact that she had learned that a locked door meant that he was getting ready to beat her in earnest.

Eif squeezed here eyes closed in the moment that his booted foot landed solidly against her spine, but she _would not _cry out – not this time. She had learned just to zone out as far as she could whenever her uncle – or husband, whatever he was supposed to be now – was hurting her. So she daydreamed, imagining the day when someone from somewhere – anywhere – would come and rescue her from this horrible existence.


	7. Chapter 7

Scarlet knew that all of the kids here considered one another family. They were all just one big team here, whether by blood or not. She had thirteen years of experience under her belt as proof in that area, and most of the others had been here a year longer than she had. But little by little she was observing a change – a shifting of exactly how everybody here viewed one other somebody, whomever that may be – and truth be told she was hardly immune to that shift herself, regardless of how much Blaine was throwing a fit about it whenever they were alone.

Like now, when they were alone in the training center's shooting range.

As fourteen year old Blaine shot an arrow – missing the bull's-eye by a practically unreal distance when it barely hit the target at all – he muttered a curse under his breath before he continued the rant he was in the middle of, wrapping it up with, "I'm not saying don't trust him, exactly; I'm saying don't trust him enough to date him. He's a great guy and I would encourage you to be his friend – just not his girlfriend. That would lead to concerns for your safety on my part."

Scarlet shot her handgun at the target and growled when she did no better than her brother had with his bow and arrow. This conversation was wrecking both of theirs concentration. "And just why do you think he would hurt me? Hayne wouldn't hurt a fly, and we both know it."

Blaine slammed down his weapon and glared darkly across at her. "You're not stupid; don't act like it. Yes, I know that _Hayne _wouldn't hurt you, but what if you're around when the Hulk shows up?"

"He would prefer it if people didn't call the other guy that," she answered evenly, repositioning herself to take another shot. "And he hasn't had an incident since we started using labels, so I'd say we're fine."

"'Using labels'?" Blaine quoted in disbelief. "What's that supposed to mean; boyfriend and girlfriend?"

Scarlet nodded stiffly at the target.

Blaine rolled his eyes, before continuing to present his case. "And, just so you know, his going without hulking up doesn't mean that this is 'fine' by anyone. I've had to randomly shoot him enough times with the tranquilizer over the years for us to all know that just because he's doing well at controlling 'the other guy' doesn't mean that he'll keep doing well at controlling him. Andy's research backs me up."

"'Andy's research?' What research?"

This was a new one on her; she hadn't heard of Andy doing any research that involved hulks.

"Yeah. He's been keeping tabs on this guy, Dr. Bruce Banner, pretty much ever since Maria left, and sometimes he mentions when the Hulk comes around."

"Why does he keep track of him – Dr. Banner or the Hulk or whoever he is?"

"Both of them, I guess. He's the original Hulk, and Andy probably just thinks he's cool."

"I know; we've all heard Maria mention him. He's one of the Avengers. But why is Andy bothering with keeping tabs on him well enough to know when he has 'flare-ups'?"

"Actually, S.H.I.E.L.D. is keeping tabs on him and Andy's piggybacking on their system, from what I understand."

Scarlet rolled her eyes. "I know that too, but why does Andy care about Dr. Banner?"

Blaine sighed as if he pitied the older boy. "I think it's just because Andy's figured out that Tony Stark is his dad. I think he just wants to know anything he can about anything – or anyone – that is a part of Stark's world."

Scarlet shook her head. "That doesn't make sense. It's no secret that Andy resents Stark. Why would he cyber stalk Banner just because of a connection to his dad?"

"I'm telling you it's probably just because Andy's fascinated with the green guy."

"I don't know," Scarlet muttered. "Seems to me like Andy's pretty big into trying to dig up things about more pasts than just his own. I think he knows the things about our parents that S.H.I.E.L.D. won't tell us."

"Like?" Blaine asked, picking up his bow and arrow and shooting the target – a good bit closer to the center this time.

"Like who they actually are?" Scarlet said dryly.

"Why would Andy care?"

"Do you care?"

Blaine paused, startled by the question, and eventually shrugged.

Scarlet took his silence to mean that she wasn't going to get a real answer out of him on the admittedly sensitive topic, so after a moment in the silence she voiced another thought. "Here's an even better question: why does S.H.I.E.L.D. care?"

"Who says they do?"

"Now who's being stupid?" Scarlet snapped, whirling to glare at him like he'd just done to her. "If they didn't care, why haven't they ever told us who our parents are? The only ones of us who really know who they come from are Andy and Dakota. They share a father and Pepper Stark is Dakota's mother. Nobody else even has a name of a parent. Don't you think that's just a little weird?"

Blaine shrugged, letting loose another arrow. "Maybe they just don't know, and therefore can't tell us?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. not knowing something as simple as that?" Scarlet asked in disbelief. "We both know that's not even a possibility. They know, and so does Andy."

"What even brought on that train of thought?"

"Well, we know that Andy and Dakota are Tony Stark's; is it too much of a stretch to think that Hayne and Hazel might be Dr. Banner's children?"

"With what woman?" Blaine asked incredulously. "Surely people have more self-preservation than to have a child with the Hulk."

"Dr. Banner," Scarlet corrected. "And I mean, really, think about it. How else could the twins have become…"

Blaine raised his eyebrow and offered, "Two-sided?"

"Yeah."

"But didn't Fury say once that their mother was some scientific doctor and that she'd allowed them to be exposed to the radiation that she worked around?"

"But isn't it just as likely that she met Dr. Banner in her line of work and they had kids? Because, come on, what sort of a mother leaves her baby twins – b_oth of them _– in the presence of that much gamma radiation when she knows full well just how dangerous it is?"

Blaine shrugged again and shot off another arrow. Scarlet got the sudden urge to rip his weapon out of his hands, but resisted, hoping that her next theory would do the trick on its own.

"I bet we're all children of the Avengers." Blaine slowly lowered his bow as she continued, "Doesn't it make sense? That's how we all ended up here, how it was decided what to train each of us in. Look at us and the Avengers, Blaine! Andy is the next generation Iron Man! You and I are the next Black Widow and Hawkeye! Hayne and Hazel are already-"

Another voice butted into the conversation, finishing for her, "Hulks. Yes, she's brilliant, ladies and gentlemen." Andy slung an arm around Scarlet's shoulders, telling Blaine, "You really ought to listen to your sister a little better, man, because she totally just cracked the whole thing. Took you long enough, though, honestly," he said, glancing down at her.

Scarlet rammed him in the ribcage with a scowl, trying not to wince when her elbow hit the solidness of his internal suit instead of the softness of average flesh. Andy grinned teasingly as Scarlet snatched up her handgun and stalked out of the training room.

As the door closed behind her, she heard Andy say to her Blaine, "But before you listen to her, I need you to pay very close attention to what I'm going to tell you. I just saw that Fury's files say he has something planned for you tomorrow, and it sounds like it's going to involve Dakota."


	8. Chapter 8

"Dakota?" the electronic voice of SID – the thirteen-year-old's only usual early morning companion in the JID building – asked for her attention early the next morning.

"Yes, Sid?"

"Agent Hill is at the door."

"Sid, do you mean Agent Maria Hill?" Dakota asked in surprise. It had been months since the agent's last visit.

"Yes, according to my facial recognition software. Should I let her in?"

"Yes, Sid, go ahead," Dakota said.

Walking forward to meet Maria at the door, Dakota cast a despondent look around the areas of the house that she passed through. Almost always the teens were given advance notice when an adult was coming by so they could clean the place up beforehand, but it wasn't to be this time, and Dakota knew that shape the place was in could reflect badly on them if given any attention.

In her own mind, it made her look particularly bad since – although the fact went largely unnoticed or just flat-out denied by some – she was the one who really took charge in this place. She was the one who not only made the schedules but kept everything – and everyone – running according to them. Despite her being the youngest in the building and all but completely untrained in any type of crime-fighting or whatever the others called it, she was the voice of reason in the house and the person who was ultimately in charge – despite what her older brother thought.

See, that was the simple secret of the matter. She just let him _lead_ – but when it came down to it, she was the one who was _in charge_.

And that was exactly the way that she liked it, she thought with a smile as Agent Hill came into the entryway.

"Maria!" Dakota said gleefully before noticing that the woman was wearing her uniform. Dakota frowned slightly, also noting Maria's deeply troubled eyes. "Are you here on official business, I take it?" the young redhead asked, stiffening a little.

Maria nodded, looking a little miserable. "I need you to come with me."

"Me and who else?" Dakota asked, instantly assuming that one of the actual JIDs who were being trained was the focus of Maria's visit, as had always been the case previously. "I can wake whoever it is up and get them out the door with us in ten minutes."

"Just you for now," Maria answered softly. "Director Fury will be by in a little while to pick up Blaine, though; the director's got a training mission planned for him later on."

"Oh," Dakota said in surprise, trying to squelch her trepidation. "Alright then. Do I need to grab anything before we go? Where are we going anyway? Am I finally going to get to see New York?"

"No; the mountains; and no. We're just going on a little ride off into the sticks. Like I said before, Blaine will be joining you later." Maria took a deep breath, looking down at her hands as she murmured, "You may want to say goodbye to the others before we leave, though."

"Well, maybe not since their all still asleep. I'll see them later, right?"

"I'm sure they'd rather you woke them," answered Maria just as softly – even apologetically.

Fear welled blatantly in Dakota's throat as she realized just how wrong something was. What was Fury planning on doing to her? Memories of the agony that Andy had been in after Fury'd had the metal suit put into him swam before her eyes as she went upstairs to the third level where their bedrooms were.

She went directly to her big brother's bedroom first, creeping in and giving him a kiss on the forehead. She tried her very hardest not to wake him; chaos was going to break loose if he thought that Fury might hurt her.

"I love you," she whispered, pulling the covers back over him in the gray light of the very beginning of dawn.

She crept into Hazel and Scarlet's room next, doing a variation of the same thing that she had done with her brother.

She stopped at Hazel's bed, whispering to her sleeping form, "Keep taking care of your boyfriend, alright; but just remember that he was my brother first."

On impulse, Dakota grabbed Scarlet's handgun from on top the dresser before she left the room and put it in her waistband where it wouldn't be seen, telling the sleeping auburn-haired girl, "I'll see if I can do anything for whatever Fury has planned for Blaine."

She hesitated before going into Blaine and Hayne's room, but when she opened the door, she found that Blaine wasn't even there. He was already awake in the house somewhere. She sighed in frustration, shutting the door. She had hoped to talk to him before leaving, but it wasn't like she had time to go looking for him; Maria was still waiting for her.

She turned away to go back down to the agent in question and almost yelped when someone reached out and grabbed her forearm.

"Blaine," she gasped, turning to him and taking in his normal uniform of black jeans and a t-shirt along with his just-out-of-the-shower wet hair and wide eyes.

"It'll be okay, Koty," he whispered to her there in the hallway. "I promised your brother, and I'm promising you now. They tell us what to do, but they never really stay around to make sure we do it anymore, so it'll be okay at least until we get back here." Dakota opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but he just shook his head quickly, reminding her, "Maria's waiting."

And so she went with Maria, who simply drove her out to the mountains and left her there alone, and all the while, the agent was fighting tears. This terrified Dakota more than anything; she couldn't remember ever seeing the agent cry.

"Put this on," Maria ordered, handing her a necklace once they got into the mountains.

Dakota turned from Maria and did as she was told, before turning back to where the woman had stood. Now the brunette was walking away from her.

"Maria, wait!" Dakota screamed, catching up with the agent as she realized she was about to be abandoned in this chilly middle of nowhere. "What do I do?"

"The necklace has a tracker in it. Fury's going to give the equipment to Blaine so that he can find you, so in the end it won't matter anyway, but if I were you I'd run… and pray that he'll make a different call." Maria pushed her away urging her to start moving. "Go now!"

So the two went opposite directions – Maria back towards the SUV and Dakota into the cover of the trees – while Dakota tried to remember where she'd heard those words before.

_Make a different call_…

She'd heard them from Andy, who had at the time been referencing the husband and wife S.H.I.E.L.D duo of Hawkeye and Black Widow. The Black Widow had been Hawkeye's mark, but he had "made a different call" and left her alive before becoming her partner, and much later, her husband. What in the world was going on here?

With these thoughts continuously whirling through her head, Dakota ran and kept on running. She wasn't sure when she started crying, or when it was that she fell and ended up sitting with her back against a tree, hugging her knees as she shivered and sobbed, just that that was what she was doing when she felt something cold and sharp press against her shoulder blade.

She screamed, scrambling backwards on all fours, so blinded with sudden terror that she didn't realize who she was facing until she had whipped out Scarlet's gun and was screaming, "I'll shoot you!"

"Go ahead," the familiar voice said. Dakota would've been totally at ease with him, but he was still pointing an arrow right at her left eye, and she didn't relish the idea of ending up like Fury. "Because if you don't, then we're going to have to figure out a way to get both of ourselves out of some hot water with the director."

"Do you have any ideas?"

"No, but Andy and I talked about more than just this yesterday. He thinks that Fury's getting geared up to get us ready so that he can send all of us out on a mission – minus you and plus a secret friend of Fury's, it looks like."

Dakota lowered her gun slowly, eyeing Blaine as she requested, "Do tell."

* * *

**And thus the end of the second story; thanks for sticking with me this long. I promise the third - "So They Fought" - won't be long in coming. ****Reviews are my new best friend, if you feel so inclined to drop me one! Thanks!:)**


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